The "natural memory of men was dulled by the 'monstrous images' concocted in mnemonic arts; the attempts to overload the mind with infinite pieces of information often 'caused madness and frenzy instead of profound and sure memory.'"
Cornelius Agrippa, 1530 (http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~ken/ken/inquirySpace/body.html)
The medieval model for memory, that of a palace of many rooms wherein discrete pieces of information were stored, became as complex throughout the period as models for the cosmos. By the 16th century, when written conventions had become well established and print was, if not universal at least well-known, Agrippa could comment scathingly on this outdated model.
In a strangely ironic way, computing, though really based on bits, uses a storage model that is quite similar to the medieval memory palace!
(Those of you interested in Foucault's work on leprosy and madness probably appreciate Agrippa's image here.)